


Girl Meets Girl

by PoeticallyIrritating



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bands, Alternate Universe - High School, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2018-01-21 10:52:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1548050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoeticallyIrritating/pseuds/PoeticallyIrritating
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Delphine is the hot foreign exchange student and Cosima is in a girl band, for...some reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue + Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this mix](http://doodlesbytara.tumblr.com/post/73901538340) by tumblr user doodlesbytara. (I decided to nix the other clones, though; just Cosima and Delphine here.)
> 
> Also: a more appropriate rating for this fic would be T for almost every chapter and E for chapter 5--since I can't do that, I've split the difference.

Cosima falls into the band, honestly. She’s stoned and everything is hazy and she’s singing low and husky along to someone’s gently strummed guitar when her friend Amanda says, “Dude.”

Cosima ignores her at first, but at the second, more urgent “dude” she lets her voice trail off.

It seems to take her a very long time to turn her head—maybe, she thinks idly, like the fabric of time and space is bending around her head (is that conceited, to think of her brain as a supermassive object?) and she almost starts to push herself up and venture inside to pick up a half-finished book about relativity. But the ground is like an insurmountable obstacle, and besides, Amanda was—saying something, maybe?

Fuck is she high.

It takes a monumental effort of coordination between her lungs, diaphragm, voice box, tongue, lips, to say: “What’s up?”

“You should join our band.”

Sober Cosima—or even slightly-less-stoned Cosima, which is probably the best you’re going to do on a Saturday afternoon—would have said, “Fuck, man, all you play is shitty pop music.” But stoned-off-her-ass, not-even-sure-what-month-it-is Cosima is overwhelmed by a feeling of immense love. She loves Amanda, loves her smoke-filled garage, loves Simon’s talented fingers as they roll a joint (fingers, she thinks, heh, and almost loses the thread of the conversation to half-formed images of other situations that have involved Simons’ fingers), loves her own voice, loves shitty pop music. “Mm…” she says, still half-distracted by Simon, “okay.”

“Awesome,” says Amanda. The weed melts her uptight edges, unclenches her fists. Her voice loses its shrillness and Cosima can start to see, when she’s like this, how she’d make a pretty awesome guitarist. It’s not that she has less energy now, but it’s not held so tightly inside her. It surrounds her, expansive. Like a force field, Cosima thinks, and then force and then her mind gets tangled up in Newton and Star Wars, Darth Vader and falling apples—she laughs and it’s clear and joyful in the thick, smoky air.

She wakes up easily the next morning—no; she checks the clock and it’s emphatically afternoon—to four missed calls from Amanda. And oh, there it goes again. “What,” she answers, picking up the phone.

“God, finally! I was about to come throw rocks at your window.” Cosima can practically hear the adrenaline. “Turns out we’ve totally got a gig this weekend! Now that we actually have a singer. Come over, we’re practicing.”

“We’ve…what?” She rubs the sleep from her eyes and pushes back the covers, waiting for her brain to catch up with whatever is going on with Amanda. “Oh. Oh, shit, I said I’d be in your—band…thing.”

“Yeah, Cosima,” she says, and there’s an edge of irritation in her voice, an edge of you’d better follow through on this. “You did.”

“Okay, right, shit, sorry.” She stumbles out of bed. “I’ll totally be there in, uh, half an hour, okay? I just woke up like ten seconds ago.”

It’s more like an hour, but at least she makes it, and that seems to be Amanda’s thought process too—her eyes barely flick toward the clock when Cosima walks in. They’re in Amanda’s clumsily soundproofed garage, rehearsing something upbeat that is pretty much impossible to identify when the only singer is Emily the bassist mumbling the lyrics tunelessly. “What are you guys playing?”

The drummer, Quinn, throws up her hands, and the other two fade out in absence of a beat. “Something ridiculous,” she groans. Amanda holds up a CD case labeled Juliet – LMNT.

“I have noooo idea what that means,” says Cosima. “What kind of a band name—”

“They were a pop band in, like, 2002,” says Amanda, handing Cosima a handwritten page of lyrics.

“Hey Juliet, I think you’re fine,” she reads aloud, raising her eyebrows. “You really do find the shittiest of shitty pop music, don’t you?” Amanda looks almost hurt; Cosima recovers hastily. “But hey, I’m the one singing it, right? That’s pretty queer. Totally up for it.” She grins and glances down at the page again. Girl you got me on my knees. Grins bigger. Scratch pretty; more like incredibly queer.

“God, Cos, you’re so gay.”

Cosima’s fiddling with the microphone already—well, mostly searching for the “on” button. She says “nah” without looking up.

“You’re not gay?”

“Dude, are you kidding me?” She stops with the microphone. “I was dating Simon like three weeks ago.”

“But then—you just said—” Amanda’s plainly confused. “Are you straight then?”

“No, I totally like girls, too.” She shrugs. “Like, bisexual or something.”

There’s a pause. “Or something?”

“There are a lot of words for this kind of thing, man. Kinda just want to like who I like and figure out what it means later, you know? Like, who gives a shit?”

“Okayyyy,” says Amanda slowly, nodding. “Okay.”

“So can I actually hear this song?”

Amanda nods rapidly and pops the CD into the dusty player in the corner and it comes on: all auto-tune, all poppy upbeats. Cosima can’t help but smile, listening to it. It’s cheesy, sure, but there’s a part of her that’s totally into cheesy, totally into singing ridiculous pop songs in a ridiculous girl band. They play the track four times through, until Cosima feels like she knows what she’s doing, and then they set up again. And there’s something great about it. Quinn’s drumming is a little off, a little harsh, and Emily plays the bass with something like intensity or anger, and Amanda, for all her nervous uptightness, is a damn good guitar player. And then Cosima’s voice comes into it and she’s kind of the opposite of a pop singer, her voice is the kind of voice that sings indie rock ballads, and somehow it totally works. She’s fudging the lyrics, trying to read the messy handwriting on the paper in her hand, and everyone’s fumbling a little but they totally have some kind of potential. And Cosima can’t stop grinning.

-

The band is still only a few days old on the Monday that a blonde girl Cosima’s never seen before pokes her head through the door of her bio classroom, saying, “Ah, excuse me, but I think I am meant to be in this class?” with a soft French accent. At the teacher’s prompting, she comes all the way inside, and she’s all long lithe limbs and curly blonde hair and the _biggest_ eyes and Cosima can’t quite remember how to breathe.

“Cosima?” calls Mrs. Dawson, and Cosima nearly leaps out of her seat.

“Yeah?”

“I know you work well alone, but this gives us an even number of students—you wouldn’t mind having our new student as a lab partner, would you?”

“God, no,” says Cosima, and blushes bright red at her own enthusiasm. “I mean, like, that’s totally fine,” she tries to cover, but the damage is done. The girl doesn’t seem to notice, though, or if she does it doesn’t faze her. “Delphine,” she says, by way of introduction, holding out her hand.

“Cosima,” she responds, shaking it. “Nice to meet you.”

Delphine smiles as she sits down, a little shyly. “You as well.”

And it turns out Delphine is totally good at biology, like, maybe-as-good-as-Cosima kind of good, and by the third time she answers a question Cosima can already hear muttering from the back about how super unfair it is that the two of them are lab partners.

“So how do you like the States?” Cosima asks at the end of class, hopping down from her chair and shouldering her bag.

“Oh, well, I have only been here for three days, so it is still a little bit—eh—over…” She pauses to hunt for the right word, but only comes up with a vague hand gesture.

“Overwhelming?” Cosima suggests, and Delphine nods rapidly. “Dude, I get that, totally. Culture shock, right? We should hang out sometime, though, when you’ve had a while to adjust and everything.”

They do, on Thursday night, and God, this girl is beautiful.

It’s all she can think about. Delphine is going on about cellular respiration, touching on things that are only tangentially related to the test they’re supposed to be studying for, and Cosima just hopes that her blatant staring can be misinterpreted as polite interest. It’s interest, sure—Delphine knows a hell of a lot and she’s got a thing for gruesome infectious diseases—but the interest is more ravenous than polite, more like _oh God, her mind is beautiful too, she knows more than I thought was possible, how much hotter could she possibly be?_ Delphine pauses, breathless, hunting for a word. A lot of the scientific words are practically the same; Cosima prompts her to say the word in in French. “ _Eucaryote_ ,” she pronounces, and Cosima laughs. “Totally the same word,” she says, “minus the hacking and gargling in the middle, and plus, like, a ‘y’ sound at the beginning. Eukaryote.”

“Gargling?” She pronounces the word delicately.

“Oh, just kidding, sorry, just about the whole”—she makes her best attempt to imitate the sound—“thing.”

Delphine nods, demonstrating the noise much more skillfully. “The Parisian ‘r.’ Like in, ah, well, _Paris._ Or, mm, _lèvres.”_

Cosima repeats the word clumsily. “What does that mean?”

“Ah, it means lips,” says Delphine. She bites her own, a self-conscious kind of gesture, the bottom one tugged between her teeth.

“Oh,” says Cosima, and she must be blushing; she feels hot right down to her toes.

“Or _travail_ ,” Delphine adds, something like a smile at the corner of her mouth, “which is what I think we are meant to be doing.”

Cosima looks at her blankly. “…Traveling?”

Delphine laughs (and her laugh is like sunshine and oh God, waxing poetic means Cosima’s in _deep_ ). “Working,” she corrects. “Remember, we have an examination of biology tomorrow?” Cosima laughs despite herself, and Delphine looks up wide-eyed. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No, no, don’t worry about it, totally got what you were saying. I’d say, you know, biology test, biology exam, but it’s totally cool. Totally comprehensible. Your English is, like, spot-on most of the time, honestly.”

“Oh!” Her cheeks turn pink, but so faintly that Cosima thinks she might have imagined it. “Thank you! I am, ah, trying very much.”

“For real, though, do you need to study for this thing anymore? Because I feel like I’m totally going to kick this test’s ass. Plus Mrs. Dawson gives us, like, a huge curve. I mean, sometimes I fuck it up, though.” She grins, a little self-satisfied. “Gets everyone pissed.”

Delphine’s mouth opens and closes. “I am sorry,” she says finally. “I did not…catch most of that. Um…” She repeats Cosima’s words back to her, haltingly. “‘Kick this test’s…ass?’”

“Oh, sorry, dude, idioms and stuff. Totally didn’t mean to confuse you. Um, hard to explain, I guess, but basically I think I’m going to do well. And I guess that’s translated into, like, fighting language. Like…this test and I are in a battle, and I’m going to win, I guess.”

She’s laughing again and Cosima’s chest tightens. “That is very American.”

“Yeah, I guess so, huh? We like our battles and shit.”

“Then, to answer your question, I think you are right about the studying. I am also going to, ah, kick this test’s ass.” Her accent is gentle, carefully wrapping around the new phrase like it might break if she’s too harsh.

“Okay, awesome. So your host mom’s picking you up in what, like, two hours? What do you want to do?”

“Whatever you want,” says Delphine, “ah, as long as it is not very, mm, strenuous, yes? I am feeling a little tired.” So Cosima pops a DVD into the player in the empty living room and settles into the couch cushions. Delphine sits beside her— _really close to her_ , and should she be reading into that? She should probably be paying attention to the movie, should probably at least be looking at the screen, but instead she’s focusing on Delphine’s fingers and the way they’re playing absently with the hem of her shirt.

“Do you want a blanket?”

Delphine looks up. “Ah, excuse me?”

“Oh, just—you have goosebumps.” Oh, shit. Delphine looks confused, and what if she’s creeped out that Cosima was looking so closely at her? What if she leaves? “Um, I mean, it can get cold in this house, I know—my parents aren’t big on, like, heating. We have it, but I’m not supposed to turn it on because we’re, uh, saving the planet, or something.”

“Saving the planet,” Delphine repeats. Laughs. “I like that.”

“Yeah, well, it’s that kind of city.” Cosima shrugs. “So. Blanket?”

“You mean like a, ah, quilt, correct?”

“Yeah—like that.” Cosima grins.

“In that case, yes.”

“What else would I mean?” She hops up from the couch to snag a blanket from the linen closet.

“Oh, in French, _blanquette_ , it refers to…hm…something like soup.”

“Oh, shit, Delphine, I didn’t even think—are you hungry? I usually have dinner a little later than this, so I kind of forgot—”

“No, no, I am fine,” she says. “It was a note on language, not a plea for food.” And then, with a look at the blanket in Cosima’s arms: “I am a bit cold, though.”

“Okay, cool.”

She plops back down on the couch and hands off the blanket. Delphine curls up in it, pulling her knees up to her chest. They sit in silence for a while, until Delphine prompts, “Cosima, are you going to start the movie again?”

“Oh—shit, right, sorry.” She presses _play_ and the bookish, misunderstood protagonist stutters into motion again. They sit and watch: Cosima with one leg crossed over the other, Delphine with everything below the neck covered by a blanket depicting significant events in the history of medieval Europe.

Cosima makes to push herself up from the couch again.

“Cosima—?”

“Oh, I was just going to go grab another blanket. Kinda cold myself, here.”

“There is no need,” says Delphine, eyes flitting from the TV to Cosima. “There is room enough for two.” She holds up the end of the blanket, and Cosima only briefly considers before settling back on the couch again.

She edges closer, carefully, until she’s covered by the blanket and Delphine’s arm and her arm are separated by maybe two inches of space. She freezes the second she notices their closeness, goes stiff and still, praying that she doesn’t brush their arms together accidentally—praying, maybe, that Delphine does.

When it actually happens it’s more electric than anything else and it’s impossible to tell who was responsible. They both jerk away, startled—or is it only Cosima (Cosima who’s been thinking about her skin and Delphine’s skin and whether they’re close enough for their electrons to interact, Cosima whose synapses are crackling electricity) who feels like she’s been shocked?

Delphine doesn’t look spooked, at least; she smiles at Cosima when she sees her looking. “You like the movie?” she asks, and Cosima nods. It’s not completely a lie, necessarily. She _might_ like it, if she looked at the screen more than once. If she weren’t totally distracted by the long delicate fingers now worrying the edge of the blanket.

“Do you?”

Delphine shrugs. “I don’t watch many movies. I like it well enough.”

“Oh, if you don’t like it we can totally turn it off! I’m not paying much attention anyway.”

She looks apologetic. “I do not mind it,” she says, but Cosima’s already going for the remote.

It turns out to be a bad idea, turning off the movie, because now they’re sitting on the couch under a blanket and Cosima has nowhere to look but Delphine. They’re really close together—like, super close, like their-arms-already-brushed together close, and being cold is no longer a problem that Cosima has. She can feel the flush in her cheeks, so surely Delphine can see it—though if she can, she’s ignoring it admirably. She starts speaking again: asking about the high school, about what Cosima wants to do for college (Delphine’s brow furrows at the word; it turns out _college_ in French means middle school), about Delphine’s thoughts about studying in the US after high school.

“You’d do that? Come here for coll—sorry, for, um, university?”

“I don’t know yet,” she says. “Maybe. The schools are very good here, and there is, ah, not much of a job market in biology in France.”

“Oh, dude, that’s rough,” says Cosima. “It would be totally cool if you came to school here! Come to Berkeley with me, and we can hang out.”

“You already know where you are going to school?”

“Nah, don’t apply until the beginning of next year. Same as you, I guess, if you decide to apply to schools year. But, you know, fingers crossed.” She holds up overlapping index and middle fingers, grinning. And then she’s talking about Berkeley and wow, her hands are going; she forgot how much she _wants_ this. She’s trailing off dreamily about some research going on in the biotech department when there’s a gentle pressure on her shoulder, and… “Oh, shit.” It’s said in a whisper. Delphine’s fallen asleep, her head resting against Cosima, blonde curls falling across Cosima’s chest. Her breath is slow and gentle and the heat of it is on Cosima’s skin. “Shit,” she whispers again.

A strand of Delphine’s hair has fallen into her face. Almost unthinking, Cosima reaches over to brush it behind her ear, and it’s totally inappropriate and totally scary and she sits with her heart thumping, the vibrations of her heart echoed in Delphine’s breaths on her chest.

She shifts, just a little, and Delphine makes a soft murmur of a sound, stirring sleepily and then jolting upright. “Oh, I am so sorry,” she says, flushing pink. “I did not mean—it must still be, ah, the jet lag, you know?”

“Oh my god, totally don’t apologize, that’s not even necessary. I’m, uh—I’m sorry for waking you up.” She blushes herself, and she feels so stupid, sitting there matching Delphine’s shade of red. Delphine’s rubbing sleep from her eyes and her hair is messed up where her head was against Cosima and it’s so cute, she’s so _cute._ Her teeth tug at the edge of her lip and Cosima’s pulse is throbbing all through her beneath her skin. She combats the urge to run her hands through sleep-tousled hair, to lean over and kiss lips with all the lip gloss rubbed off. It shouldn’t be _allowed,_ Delphine’s mouth and the indents her teeth have pressed into her lips.

Before she has time to do anything stupid, a knock at the door jerks her back to herself. She adjusts her glasses and hops up while Delphine smooths down her hair. Delphine’s host mom gives a small wave, but declines Cosima’s invitation to come inside.

“She’s gonna wait for you in the car,” Cosima says, returning to the couch and leaning against its arm to watch Delphine lacing her shoes.

Delphine straightens up and meets Cosima face to face, and then she’s leaning in. Cosima’s skin flushes hot all over and she moves forward to meet her, heart thudding—and Delphine’s cheek touches hers. _Right. French._ Her lips nearly touch skin. She repeats the motion on the other side, and then her hand flutters into a wave. _“Au revoir,”_ and she’s gone.

Cosima stares after her. _“Shit.”_


	2. Chapter 2

Delphine shows up to class the next morning pretty damn bright-eyed for a test day. They’re relegated to opposite ends of their shared table for the exam, and as she appraises her own test Cosima can hear the quick scratching of Delphine’s pencil. She’s fast, faster than Cosima—hers is the first page to flip, every time. But they both finish with almost half an hour left in the period, sitting with the full length of the table between them, tests deposited on the teacher’s desk. Delphine pulls out a book when she’s finished, something in French, but Cosima wasn’t so forward-thinking and her backpack is empty of reading material.

She rests her chin on her folded arms and watches Delphine as she furrows her brow, absently bites her lip. She licks her fingertip before turning pages. Her hair keeps falling in her eyes; she keeps drawing it back with her fingers. When she finally glances up, Cosima sticks out her tongue.

Delphine’s laughter draws Mrs. Dawson’s attention, but by the time she looks over Delphine’s already stifled it in the sleeve of her sweater. “You’re bad,” Delphine mouths, somewhere between indignant and amused, and Cosima winks.

In the last five minutes of class, everyone’s finally finished with their tests, and the room fills with conversation and the sound of bags being zipped shut. Cosima uses her feet to slide her chair back into its usual position, the metal legs screeching against the floor. Delphine gets out of her chair before moving it back, considerably reducing the noise involved. She leans against the table, and Cosima pushes her seat back from the desk again so that they’re facing each other. Delphine winces. “Can’t you stop making that noise with your chair?”

“Totally,” says Cosima. Her grin is all teeth. “I was just thinking, do you want to hang out again?”

“Oh!” says Delphine. “Yes. I had a good time. I am sorry I fell asleep; I don’t normally—”

“Already forgotten,” Cosima says, with a wave of her hand, which is totally true if “forgotten” means “still thinking about the way your head felt on my shoulder.” “Um, my band has, like, a gig thing on Friday night, if you want to come. We could hang out afterward, or whatever. I don’t know how your host family feels about, like, parties and curfews and stuff. I mean, it’s a party…”

“You are in a band?”

“Oh, uh, yeah. I mean, it’s not a big deal. I’ve been in it for, like, a week. Something to do, you know?”

“I think that’s wonderful,” says Delphine. “What instrument do you play?”

“Oh, I’m actually, uh, the singer,” she says. “Not like I have a really good voice or anything, it’s just, you know…” but she trails off and she’s grinning because she likes her voice, and she likes how it sounds singing stupid pop songs. Kind of wants Delphine to hear her sing stupid pop songs.

“I would love to hear you sing,” says Delphine, and her smile sticks with Cosima all day.

The night of the gig Cosima’s vibrating with suppressed energy, smoking a joint behind the house in hopes it’ll soften her anxious edges. “You shouldn’t smoke right before singing,” Amanda warns, but Cosima shrugs and says, “I’m going for a husky kind of thing.” (She can’t explain that if she doesn’t smoke she might explode, her heart might pound right out of her chest.)

They play three songs (and Amanda was right; Cosima’s throat is burning) before she spots a head of blonde curls in the crowd. She looks even taller than usual, somehow, dignified in the noisy crowd, and she pushes toward the band until Cosima can see she’s in something short and black and tight and Cosima’s never imagined her in anything but jeans but it’s enough to make her heart stop. Delphine has a red cup in hand but she hasn’t taken a sip of it; it’s forgotten in favor of the band. Cosima’s singing and her voice breaks all over the place and she’s acutely aware of every occurrence of the word “she,” of every time she sings _the way she smiles_ and thinks _Delphine._

They’re on a ten-minute break when Quinn sidles up beside her. “That French girl you like looks _hot_ tonight.”

Cosima lets out her breath in a huff, head shaking in disbelief. “You’re telling me.”

“Are you going to talk to her? She came to see _you_ , didn’t she?”

“Yeah, we’re, uh, hanging out after we’re done with music stuff.”

Quinn shakes her head. “Her first week here and you’ve already snatched up the foreign exchange student. You’re like fuckin’ girl catnip.”

“Girlnip?” Cosima suggests. She’s grins in a ridiculous, self-satisfied kind of way. Laughing at her own joke.

“Sure, man, whatever,” Quinn says. Her eyes roll. “Just leave some for the rest of us.”

“Totally. Next hot French girl I see, I’ll send her in your direction.”

“Hold you to that,” says Quinn. “You going to actually do anything with your French girl? Or just, like, admire her from afar?”

Cosima buries her face in her hands. “God, don’t ask me.”

Quinn shrugs. “Just checking, man. You like her?”

Cosima groans into her palms.

“God, all right, I’ll leave you to it.” She looks back into the crowd. “That’s a good dress she’s got on.”

“Yeah,” says Cosima, and she catches sight of Delphine (red-lipsticked Delphine with the black dress tight against her hips) and offers another groan. “Yeah, it is.”

It’s only a few more songs before it hits 12:30 and they’re off the hook, replaced by an iPod plugged into the sound system. Delphine’s been in the crowd the whole time, dancing and drinking, and when Cosima gets to her after helping to pack up the band gear she’s more than a little drunk, giggling into her empty plastic cup.

“I didn’t know that you really had these,” she’s saying, brandishing the red cup at Cosima. “Like on TV…I thought it was fake.”

“Nope,” says Cosima. “Real American tradition. Red Solo cups, and everything.” She gestures at the cup in Delphine’s hand. “Anything good?”

Delphine curls her lip. “Beer, it seems like.”

Cosima nods. “Pretty much what you’re going to get at a high school party, I think. Any more left?”

“I do not think they will ever run out.” She gestures in the direction of what turns out to be a keg. Cosima fills a cup, sipping at it gingerly, her nose scrunched up. “You don’t like beer?”

Cosima shakes her head. “I’m trying, man. It’s rough.” She takes another sip, makes another face, and holds out the cup. “Can’t do this. You want it?”

Delphine shakes her head, laughing. “I do not think I should. I have probably, ah, had enough.”

“Sure, dude. Good for you.” She tosses it in the trash along with Delphine’s empty cup and starts digging in her pockets. “I might have a joint. Uh, you mind?” She gestures toward the sliding glass doors to the backyard.

“Not at all.” She pulls a cigarette from the pack in her little purse. “I can, ah, smoke with you…if you like?”

Cosima takes Delphine’s hand and pulls her toward the doors. Grins a little crookedly as she pulls them open. “I like.”

They settle onto the concrete. Cosima sits cross-legged, leaning against the side of the house, and Delphine faces her, folding her legs underneath herself and wincing at cold concrete on bare skin. Cosima flicks the lighter she dug from her pocket, lets it flare for a moment, illuminating their faces, before lighting the joint and passing the lighter to Delphine. She lights the cigarette held between slender fingers and takes a long drag as she hands it back.

Cosima’s never liked cigarettes much, never liked the smell. She tried one, once, holed up in the girls’ bathroom her freshman year with an older girl who was too beautiful and dangerous for her to resist—but the smoke made her sputter and choke and the girl looked at her with something like disappointment. But now, the way Delphine places it deliberately between her lips, the way she smokes it down and the butt is ringed with lipstick stains, the way their smoke mingles together in the air, barely visible by the light from the windows…she doesn’t mind it so much. And Delphine’s laughter is coming easily, sometimes in response to nothing at all.

“You all right, dude?” Cosima raises her eyebrows. Delphine’s breathless from laughing and so far Cosima hasn’t said anything particularly funny.

“I am—mm— _un peu ivre._ ”

Cosima shrugs. “I…dooon’t know what that means.”

“Mm,” Delphine says, taking another drag on her cigarette. “The word is—ah—drunk.” Her giggles overtake her and she chokes on her own smoke.

“Yeah, wow, I can see that. Uh, maybe we’d better get you some water.”

Delphine nods vigorously, curls bouncing. Cosima presses her joint against the ground to put it out, and jumps up to hunt for water inside.

When she returns, Delphine is lying on her back, looking up at the sky. Cosima sits down beside her. “Got you some water,” she says, placing the cup next to her.

“I wish there were more stars,” Delphine says softly.

Cosima cranes her neck back to look up. “Well, there are,” she says. “I mean, you can’t see them all right now, because of, like, light pollution and shit, but they’re totally there. Billions and billions of stars.”

“There are more stars at home,” says Delphine, and Cosima chuckles.

“Homesick?”

“Only a little.” She rolls her head to the side, smiles up at Cosima. “You are here.”

“Yeah,” says Cosima, trying not to let her breath catch in her throat. “Yeah, I’m here.” She wants to reach over, to brush Delphine’s hair from her neck, so instead she balls her hand into a fist and holds it close at her side. “Hey, Delphine, you’ve got to sit up. Get some water in you. Don’t wanna be, like, hungover tomorrow, all right?”

Eventually Delphine pushes herself up and accepts the glass of water. She’s shivering, arms and lips trembling.

“You cold?”

 _“Un peu_ —ah, I mean—sorry. I mean, a little. I am a little cold.”

Cosima shrugs off her cardigan.

“Oh—no—Cosima, that is not—”

She drapes it over Delphine’s shoulders. “It’s cool, I kinda run hot anyway.” Which is true, sure, but it’s pretty damn cold out, and she’s rubbing her arms to keep them warm. “Besides, it matches your dress.” She winks.

Delphine shakes her head, laughing. “You did not have to—to do that.” But she pulls it tighter around herself, and her shivering has died down. “Cosima…” she murmurs.

“Yeah?”

Delphine hums. “I like the sound. You know? It’s a good name. Co-si-ma.” She pronounces it carefully, even as her intoxicated lips fumble with words.

“You just…said my name? Just to say it?” She doesn’t know whether to laugh.

Delphine bites her lip. Smiles. And then she’s leaning in and Cosima carefully reminds herself _French, she kisses on the cheek,_ but they’re not saying goodbye and she’s not turning her head and _oh, shit_. Delphine’s lips touch hers, lightly at first, but then Delphine’s hand is on her neck; Delphine’s tongue is tracing the seam between her lips. Cosima opens her mouth with a soft exhalation, and Delphine’s all lips and tongue and reaching hands—

Cosima pulls away. Delphine sits, open-mouthed, her lipstick smeared. “Oh,” she begins to say. “Oh, Cosima, _je suis_ —I am—so sorry—”

“No, no, God, I’m—this doesn’t mean I don’t want to kiss you! Because I, like, totally, emphatically do. I just—” She shakes her head. “I’d just kinda like it if you weren’t super drunk, you know? Like, I want to be sure that, uh, that you’re sure. You know?”

“Ah.” Delphine nods, pulling another cigarette from her purse. _“Je comprend._ I mean—oh, I am so sorry, the English—when I drink, it, ah—”

“I see that,” says Cosima. She fights not to say _god, that’s cute—god, I really did want to keep kissing you._ “Let’s get you home, yeah? My ride should be headed out of here soon. I mean, I’m probs okay to drive, but better not to risk it, yeah?”

They sit together in the back of the minivan Quinn’s borrowed from her mother, Delphine wedged between Cosima and a girl they don’t know. The car is full of people shouting and Quinn, sober and bitter, is shouting back, but Cosima’s world has shrunk to all the points where Delphine’s body is touching hers.

“I will see you on Monday, then,” says Delphine when she gets out. _“Merci beaucoup,”_ she calls to Quinn, whose displeasure with the night has transcended words. The second Delphine’s key turns in the lock, Quinn’s pulled out of the driveway with a lurch.

At home, Cosima looks in the mirror and touches the smudges of red on her lips, grinning toothily at her reflection.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Cosima means to say something right away. Totally, completely does. But on Monday morning she’s running late, as usual, and she slides into her seat next to Delphine just as the bell rings. So instead of talking about what, exactly, drunken kisses mean, they’re running around doing lab prep. And when they’ve finished, hanging up lab coats and peeling off gloves, Cosima says “Hey—” and Delphine cuts her off, apologetic, with “I have to go speak with my mathematics teacher.” And she’s gone.

On Tuesday, Cosima sits in class writing different variations of “about the other night” on scraps of notebook paper before crumpling them up and shoving them into her pocket. Delphine, carefully taking notes, doesn’t seem to notice.

 _So, we kissed on Friday._ Maybe too much. She erases the words, tries again. _So, about Friday._ Too vague? _About what happened on Friday._ Sounds like an angry email. _So, dude, the kissing thing? Still totally into that idea._ Definitely too much.

It is, potentially, kind of an impossible thing to discuss through passed notes in bio class. She watches Delphine for a minute, the way she bites the end of her pencil thoughtfully while figuring out how to organize her notes. Delphine looks up, and lifts her fingers in a benign little wave, the corners of her eyes crinkling with a smile.

 _So, you kissed me._ She crumples it up, puts it into her pocket. The collected mass of notebook paper makes a dry crackling sound.

Does she even remember?

“Cosima.”

The class ended, somehow, without her noticing. “Yeah?”

“Do you want to, ah, hang out”—the words are obviously unfamiliar in her mouth, and it makes Cosima smile—“today, maybe? You are also taking Calculus, correct? We have that quiz tomorrow…”

“Yeah,” says Cosima, maybe too quickly. “Totally. Trigonometric integrals, they’re a bitch, yeah?”

“They’re a…?”

“God, sorry. Uh, difficult.”

Delphine nods. “And difficult to learn in English. The instructor speaks very fast.”

“God, I feel that. I have a hard time keeping up with her sometimes. And with, like, the language barrier, it’s gotta be even harder.” Cosima shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “So, uh, your place or mine?” And she kinda wants to blush at the implications there but instead she makes her smile broader, owns the damn innuendo. Strong possibility Delphine didn’t even catch it.

“Maybe, ah, your place again?”

 _Again,_ Cosima thinks. Flash to Delphine’s head on her shoulder, Delphine’s cheek pressed against hers.

“Sure,” she says. “My parents are gone again—like, uh, always, basically—so we’ll have the place to ourselves. And if you wanna stay for dinner I can, you know, whip something up.”

“You cook?” Delphine asks.

“Nah, not exactly. But I can make us, like, mac and cheese.”

“Macancheese?”

Cosima shakes her head, laughing, the ability to explain standard toddler fare suddenly lost to her. “I’ll show you. Pasta. Cheese. So easy your average sixteen-year-old science geek can do it!”

“You are not exactly average,” says Delphine gently.

Cosima’s stomach lurches, and she lets out a little huff of laughter. “Oh. Uh. Thanks.”

“So I will meet you after school?”

“Yeah. Great.”

They walk home together: Cosima hopping along the curb, nearly toppling over from the weight of her backpack; Delphine walking on the street, several inches lower than Cosima but still somehow taller. (Delphine is _really damn tall.)_ And it’s still January, sure, they’re still in sweaters and long pants, but the sun came out around lunchtime and the world looks bright and warm and the air feels like spring. They walk side by side, Delphine apparently calm, Cosima tapping her nervous energy out against her thigh. It’s only a few blocks but it feels like more; every glance at Delphine gnaws at her insides. She shoves her hand into the mess of paper scraps in her pocket, just to feel. When they reach her house, Cosima has to stand on tiptoe to reach the house key resting on top of the door frame.

“Oh, you didn’t see that, okay?” She turns back to Delphine, flustered. “Not supposed to show anyone—kinda forgot, sorry. If my parents find out you saw they’ll get pissed, change where we keep the key, and then I’ll forget and get locked out.”

“Oh,” says Delphine seriously, eyes sparkling, “that sounds very dire. I saw nothing.”

Cosima turns the key in the lock and holds the door open for Delphine. They settle in for studying on Cosima’s bedroom floor, just like they did for biology, but it feels different now. Delphine’s proximity prickles warm on her skin and the unfinished notes rustle in her pocket when she rests down on her knees. Every inch of her is oversensitive, alert, jumping at real or imagined touches from Delphine’s careless hands (like Cosima’s own, sometimes, but more contained, more prone to fluttering than grand gestures).

They bounce back and forth between the textbook and Cosima’s notes for instruction, Cosima studying her abysmal handwriting and relaying the pertinent information to Delphine, whose notes are hurried and intensive but mostly unsalvageable, dedicated to the fragments of sentences she managed to pick up from the calculus teacher’s rapid and heavily accented English. Delphine’s squinting at a practice problem, muttering the half-remembered formula for the derivative of an inverse tangent under her breath, when Cosima says, “Hey.”

Delphine looks up, her lips pursed, halfway through the word “plus.” She doesn’t lift her pencil from the paper. “Yes?”

“Uh…” But is it really better to know?

She waits too long. “Ah, Cosima, I am almost finished with these problems. One moment, yes?”

“Yeah,” says Cosima, turning her eyes back to her own paper. “Yeah, sure, totally. You’re on, uh, number eight?”

“Mm.”

Cosima solves it in under a minute. She’s always been good at finding patterns. And then she rests her chin on her hands and waits, watching Delphine’s brow furrow—and after a moment Delphine has it too, and she sits back on her heels with a self-satisfied smile. Cosima’s hand goes in her pocket again, playing with the scraps of paper, but she looks at the clock. “Oh, hey, it’s like six. Dinner?”

Delphine unfolds herself, nodding as she stands. “I am ready to, ah, witness your skills on the kitchen.”

Cosima, suppressing a giggle, leads the way. “My skills in the kitchen, gotcha.”

“Oh!” Delphine shakes her head, flustered. “ _In_ the kitchen, you’re right.”

“Yeah, whatever, no sweat. Totally got your meaning.”

The kitchen is disappointing. Cosima stands on her tiptoes to look at the top shelves of the pantry, crouches while digging through the low cabinets. “Not even mac and cheese,” she reports to Delphine, who is standing in the middle of the kitchen looking helpless. “Guess my parents forgot to go to the store.”

“Well, I can call my host mother and tell her I will need to eat there after all—”

Cosima hops up from her place on the floor. “Don’t go!” She flushes. “I mean, if you don’t want to. Like, I need to eat too, right? We could order a pizza. Or go out! Like, technically I’m not supposed to, you know, transport other humans in my car—because I haven’t had my license for a year yet, or whatever—but my parents are usually cool with it. I mean, we could take a bus but it’s a ways to the closest stop.”

“This is a law? About the driving other—humans?”

Cosima’s laugh is broad and genuine. “California state law. But it’s not like they can pull me over for looking a few weeks under seventeen.”

“Ah, okay, I understand. The smoking—mm, marijuana, yes?—that is against the law too?”

Cosima shrugs. “Yeah, but, I mean, it’s San Francisco.”

Delphine is smiling. “So what you’re telling me is I am preparing to eat dinner with a criminal?”

Cosima grins back. “Guess so.”

“A…mm…not ashamed criminal.”

“Not even close. Come on, let’s go somewhere for dinner! Into the city. I’ve got some cash. My treat.”

“So you are not going to, what is it, dine and dash?” Teasing.

“’Course not, I’m not an asshole. Waiters gotta eat too.”

Delphine considers her for a moment. “Okay,” she says, nodding. _“On y va?”_

Cosima shakes her head. “Sorry, dude. No idea.”

“Let’s go!” Cosima doesn’t know if it’s a translation or if she’s moved on, but Delphine runs a hand through her hair and she’s kinda ready to get into a car with her no matter where it’s going.

Cosima drives down the freeway with all the windows rolled down, even though it’s like fifty-five degrees out and foggy, and blasts music loudly enough that she gets dirty looks from old women in shiny, well-kept Buicks. Her body is run through with sympathetic vibration, the bass thudding in her chest, loud enough that she can shut off thought and just drive, hands knocking against the wheel with the beat, Delphine in the passenger seat a vague exhilarating presence on the edge of her consciousness.

She pulls into a parking garage with a groan at the prices displayed outside.

“I can help to pay—for the parking—” Delphine suggests, but Cosima shakes her head.

“Nah, I’ve got it,” says Cosima, and it comes out casual but she’s rippling with energy. She turns the music off, and the sudden silence, the ringing echo of every soft sound between the concrete walls, is unsettling. They have to take a spot on the top floor, though, and up in the open air everything is a little clearer, with a parking space her beat-up car fits into perfectly and Delphine sitting beside her flushed from the cold with wind-blown hair.

“You look like a dandelion,” says Cosima, and when Delphine looks confused she reaches over and tousles her hair. “Your hair, all over the place.”

“Oh.” Delphine brings a hand to her face. “Oh—the wind—”

“Don’t be embarrassed,” says Cosima. “Totally cute.”

Delphine appraises herself in the side mirror as she gets out of the car. “I do not think I will be winning any beauty contests today.”

“’Cause beauty contests are bullshit. I think it’s cute.”

“Well,” says Delphine, straightening up and drawing her fingers through her hair, “that is what counts,” and for a second Cosima swears she can feel her heart stop.

They order a cheese pizza and sit across from each other at a table for two against the window. Cosima practically inhales her first slice, popping the last bite of crust in her mouth and grinning at Delphine with grease and cornmeal stuck to her lips. Delphine eats one bite at a time, unabashedly, with a kind of grace in the careful motions of her hands. She can’t keep up with Cosima as far as appetite, and when they finish there are two slices of pizza left in Delphine’s half, resting on grease-stained cardboard. “You want the rest?” Delphine asks.

Cosima shakes her head, laughing. “If I have another piece I might explode.” She takes a deep breath, looking at Delphine—Delphine, wiping her pizza-stained lips with a paper napkin. “Hey, um, Delphine, is this, like, a date?”

Her eyes widen. “I am not sure.” A little lower: “You are the one who invited me, yes?”

Cosima nods, a rhythmic kind of bobbing. “Right, okay, so uh…if it were…would that be, like, a not-bad thing?”

“Ah, _je pense…_ I mean, I think it is a good thing. Would—will—would be a good thing.” She brings a hand to her mouth, playing at her lower lip with her finger. “I, ah, I kissed you.”

Cosima’s relief comes out of her in a burst of breath. “Thank god, I thought we weren’t going to talk about it.”

Delphine’s fingers are splayed against the edge of the table. “I had never kiss—kissed, with a girl.” Her smile is a little shy.

“Seriously? Damn good kiss.” Her eyes track Delphine’s lips, as they part slightly, as she worries the bottom one with her teeth. She leans forward, letting her voice drop low. “Want to do it again?”

Delphine closes the pizza box carefully and slides it out of the way, and when she’s done Cosima reaches over to interlock their fingers. Delphine’s palm meets hers. The other girl draws in a nervous breath, and they lean forward together, lips meeting halfway across the table, just for a split second. But Cosima grips Delphine’s hand tighter and Delphine meets her again, this time with almost too much overenthusiastic force. Cosima’s lips part against Delphine’s mouth and she tastes like pizza, like cheese and grease and tomato sauce, despite her best efforts with the napkin—at the party she had lip gloss on and her kiss was berry-sweet, but Cosima thinks she might like Delphine even better with salt on her tongue.


	4. Chapter 4

Cosima makes it to class with two minutes to spare the next morning, cheeks pink, cardigan sliding off her shoulders. She looks up, breathless from the walk, and Delphine, as if drawn by Cosima’s presence (or, more probably, the slamming of the door as she ungracefully lets it go), lifts her eyes from her book. It makes Cosima stop, makes her shoes skid against the floor, the force of those eyes.

“Cosima,” says Delphine, as if to get her attention, as if Cosima weren’t already dragging her eyes down her, catching on every detail (every twist of her hair, the way her legs are just a little too long to fit comfortably under the desk, the crook of the index finger marking her page). But the sound of her voice draws Cosima’s mouth into a grin. “Heyy, Delphine,” she says, sliding into her seat.

Class starts with the blaring electronic sound of the bell before they can say anything more, but ten minutes in, she reaches over to where Delphine’s left hand is resting against the table and insinuates her own fingers into the spaces left between Delphine’s. The other girl’s breath catches at the touch, but she whispers, “Don’t you need that hand to write?”

Cosima smirks, wiggling the fingers of her left hand. “Taught myself to write left-handed in, like, a million mega-boring classes.” She rubs her thumb over a finger. “This okay?” Delphine nods shortly before returning her eyes to the front of the classroom, but Cosima sees the smile nudging at her lips.

Cosima grabs Delphine’s hand again when they get outside the classroom. “Can I walk you to class?”

Delphine laughs, trying to hide her mouth with her other hand. “You have class in the opposite direction!”

“I better walk fast, then.” She squeezes Delphine’s fingers between hers, slings her bag over her shoulder, and holds out her other hand. “Carry your books?”

Delphine’s eyes are sparkling. “I do not have any books.”

“Right. Gotcha. So much for my chivalrous instincts.”

“We could collect an unnecessary book from my locker if you like. But I think this will make you late.”

“Mm…you’ve got me there.”

The calculus classroom is halfway across campus. When they get there their palms are sliding sweaty against each other, and Delphine releases her grip outside the classroom door, swiping her hand against her jeans. People are milling around, pushing in and out through the door. “Can I kiss you?” Cosima asks, and Delphine’s face goes pink as she nods. Cosima pushes up, balancing on the balls of her feet to press a kiss to Delphine’s lips. “You’re _tall,”_ she says, dropping back down to solid ground.

“You,” says Delphine, “are short, perhaps,” and she cranes her neck down just enough to kiss her again. Gives a little hand-flutter of a wave. “I will see you after school.”

 _After school_ brings Cosima and Delphine walking together again, but everything is different, because Cosima isn’t scuffing her feet in a desperate attempt at distraction, isn’t shuffling unsaid words between her fingers. (Instead she’s looking at Delphine, grinning because she’s not afraid of being caught looking, and her fingers are twining with Delphine’s.) They’re going a different direction now, too, and where they end this time is Amanda’s garage. Cosima shoves open the temperamental side door to a burst of sound: Quinn, beating at the drums with a vengeance. “Welcome to behind the scenes,” she says, and Delphine nods, wide-eyed.

Quinn ceases her crashing long enough to raise her eyebrows at the two of them. “Damn. Snagged the hot French chick for real?”

Cosima shrugs, neither confirming or denying, but she can’t keep back her smile. “Mind if she hangs out? She’s not gonna, like, reveal trade secrets or anything. Promise.”

Amanda, in the corner with her headphones around her neck, looks over, eyebrows knotting in disapproval. “I don’t think we should have distractions at practice. We have a serious gig coming up.”

“We do?” Cosima looks up.

“Sadie Hawkins.”

“Whoa, we’re playing at the school? That’s, like…kinda a big deal, yeah?”

Delphine speaks up. “Cosima…what is Sadie…Haw-kins?”

“Uh, it’s a dance where the girls are supposed to do the asking.” She winks in Delphine’s direction. “Want to go to a dance?”

“Not if you are going to be playing music the entire time! I will be, ah, lonely.”

“Nah, probs just a couple of songs, right?” (Amanda nods, a sharp jerk of her head.) “They’ll get a DJ for most of it. Go to the dance with me?”

Delphine’s face colors as she nods.

“Awesome.”

When they start pulling out the rest of the equipment, Delphine settles into the corner left vacant by Amanda and folds in on herself, resting against her bent knees. Cosima thinks that maybe, for once, Amanda was right, because the feeling of Delphine’s eyes on her flushes hot in her skin. She flicks the microphone switch on and off, each time causing the shitty amp to make a popping sound, until finally Quinn says, “Cut it the fuck _out,_ Cosima,” and she stills her hands. Delphine is resting her chin in her hands, all sharp angles, all elbows and knees—no, focus. Not Delphine, _music._ The lyrics in her hand, the steady thump of the bass drum, Amanda’s guitar wailing out a line written for poppy synthesizer. She sways to the slowed-down beat, sings out words written for boy bands in a husky kind of way, and even though the visual world is floating on the edge of her consciousness now, her eyes flick magnetically to Delphine whenever she sings _let me kiss you._

Cosima’s impatience thrums underneath her skin through the band-meeting portion of the afternoon, and when her hand finds Delphine’s again it’s like breaking through the surface of a pool, lungs finally full. “Hey,” she says, leaning in, breathing her air.

“You missed me?” Delphine’s mouth quirks with amusement.

“God, yes.”

“I was there all the time.”

“Not close enough.” And it’s nothing like a line, not a casual falsehood meant to be taken half-seriously; it’s the pull to Delphine from somewhere deep in her gut (heart, soul), the way she misses Delphine in a visceral, physical way, the curves of her body crying out for their spaces-in-between to be filled. When they stumble out of the garage into the semidarkness she reaches for Delphine’s hips, tugs her flush against her own body and kisses her, sucking hungrily at her lips. Delphine is startled into a moan, but it’s lost, mostly, swallowed by Cosima’s open mouth.

Delphine is caught between laughter and whimpering, giggling against lips until Cosima kisses her breathless. Her hands are at Cosima’s back, somehow pulling her even closer, pressing them together, fingers making red-hot mental impressions on the sliver of skin where Cosima’s shirt has ridden up. Someone’s flyaway strands of hair get trapped between their mouths—Delphine’s, it turns out—and they break apart, Delphine bouncing back to giggles. “We should—leave your friend’s yard, perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” Cosima teases, nudging Delphine with her shoulder. “Hey, d’you want to get food or something? It’s late, and I’m _starving.”_

“Are you ever not hungry?”

 _Hungry,_ Cosima thinks, might describe her entire being. “Nope.”

They decide on a sandwich shop Cosima knows, blinking when they step into the fluorescent light, and while they wait for their orders Cosima taps her fingertips against Delphine’s palm. They pay and run out giggling.

Cosima moves in close to the warmth of Delphine’s body as they walk toward her house again, slides an arm around her waist. They walk slowly. Cosima presses soft closed-mouth kisses to the side of Delphine’s neck, to her jawline, and Delphine hums in response. “Cosima,” she murmurs, “we cannot stay on the sidewalk.”

“Right, totally. Heading to my house in three”—lips on skin—“two”—another press of her lips—“one.” A final kiss, and then they finish the walk in silence, fingers laced together.

Cosima veers away from the door. “Don’t wanna go inside,” she says, by way of explanation. “Follow me.” She stops in front of the gate to the backyard. “Hold my sandwich?” Hands free, she drops her bag to the ground and hooks her feet in just the right places on the gate, pulling herself up until she’s crouching on top, feet and hands balanced precariously. From there, if she eases herself into a standing position, she can hoist herself onto the roof, tights snagging on the edge.

“Is that safe?” Delphine asks.

“Probably not. Haven’t fallen yet, though. Hand me the sandwiches now, and you can get up too.”

“Oh, I do not—I am not much for the climbing.” She stands on tiptoe, though, to pass over the sandwiches into Cosima’s reaching hands.

“Come on! You’ve totally got this. Just put your feet where the boards are going across—yeah, exactly.” She’s so tall, just grown into her arms and legs probably, and they make awkward angles as she climbs, elbows jutting out to the side, knobbly knees sticking up as she crouches, wobbling, on top of the gate. “Almost there,” Cosima encourages, “now just stand up—grab the edge of the roof—and then you can pull yourself up the rest of the way.” Delphine’s breathing heavily when she collapses, all long limbs, beside Cosima on the gentle slope of the roof. Cosima leans back to lie down beside her. “You good?” She turns her head to speak.

“I thought I was going to fall!”

“Yeah, sorry. Little scary the first time. It’s nice up here, though, right?”

Delphine looks up at the sky. “The stars again,” she says. “I seem often to be—in starlight, with you.”

Cosima breathes in the night air and feels, suddenly, that her body is too small to contain the pounding of her heart. “I’m cold,” she says, recklessly; she’s not, not at all, not with this desperate energy thrumming through her veins. “Warm me up.”

Delphine’s laughter is light and beautiful in the near-silence. She edges closer until their arms are touching and then turns on her side, eyes meeting Cosima’s. She kisses her lightly on the cheek, makes a path with her lips from there to the corner of her mouth. Cosima kisses back, hands reaching, and it only takes a moment of confused scrambling for Delphine to swing one leg over Cosima’s body and rest above her in silhouette, backlit by the moon. Her kisses are deliberate, languorous, almost frustratingly slow. She’s relishing the opportunity to test, to try, to _tease,_ probably—Cosima takes Delphine’s bitten lower lip between her teeth and Delphine exhales a soft, breathy sound against her mouth, and then she’s less _above_ and more _against,_ her body pressed close enough to share Cosima’s body heat. Cosima’s hand tangles in blonde curls and she murmurs wordless sounds into Delphine’s mouth, into her skin; she goes breathless when Delphine nips at her earlobe. Delphine’s kisses are soft and deliberate against her neck and she tightens her grip on the other girl’s hair and arches up until she’s overcome whatever little space was still left between them.

They kiss until Delphine starts shivering, her sweater and Cosima’s body beneath her not enough to keep her warm. “I’m sorry,” she’s saying, laughing the words against Cosima’s lips, “ _d _é_ solée, d _é_ solée, mais_—I need—I am too cold.”

“No, no, totally fine, let’s go inside—oh, shit, what time is it?”

Delphine checks her watch, articulating carefully when she reports, “Ten p.m.”

“ _Shit,_ my parents are getting home soon, I have like five assignments due tomorrow—am I the worst for, like, kicking you out?”

Delphine presses one more kiss to her lips. “If you help me get down from here, I might forgive you.”

“Absolutely!” says Cosima brightly. She steps carefully onto the top of the gate, crouches, and hops down. “I’ve totally got you.”

Delphine makes it to the top of the gate all right, and then, gripping tight to Cosima’s hand, tries to jump down like Cosima did and instead stumbles into her arms, practically knocking them both to the ground. When Cosima gets her breath back she’s laughing. “Nice one.”

“I did say I needed help,” says Delphine, reproachful. But she smiles and grips Cosima’s hand.

“Drive you home?”

_“S’il te plait.”_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is super NSFW. If you're not into that, feel free to read the first paragraph and then move along.
> 
> Also: I had this work tagged with an underage warning, but looking at it alongside the other fics in that category was making me uncomfortable, so I'll just mention here that yeah, in this scenario Cosima and Delphine are under 18.
> 
> Edit, August 2016: I was barely out of high school myself when this was published but I'm closer to 21 now & I've removed the most explicit parts of this chapter in order to try to strike a more careful balance here. I may make more intensive edits later given how wide-ranging the audience for this fic has gotten.

The next week is held firmly in the palms of their hands. They lace their fingers together and walk so close to each other that their hips bump, interrupting their strides. Cosima presses Delphine against her locker during breaks, and they try out the word _girlfriend,_ testing it until it can be tossed casually at anyone who asks. _Girlfriend._ Cosima says the words to herself at night, remembering how they felt in her mouth: This is Delphine, my girlfriend. “Come over Friday?” Cosima asks, and Delphine agrees, with a smile and a tilt of her head. She tells her host mother she’s spending the night, and totes a sleeping bag to her locker—the sight of it sends Cosima into fits of laughter.

Cosima makes dinner. Afterwards she stands at the sink, but she’s only halfway through the dishes when Delphine comes up behind her and slides her hands around her waist. Cosima drops the fork she was scrubbing with a _plop_ into the water. She turns in Delphine’s arms to meet her mouth, hands trailing hot soapy water across Delphine’s hips, on the skin of her back where her shirt is riding up. They stumble against the wall, Cosima kissing with a ferocious kind of giddiness, Delphine kissing back just as hard.

And then Delphine’s mouth is hot on her neck, teeth harsh against soft skin. Delphine’s hands are on her waist and Cosima’s trying so hard to cool down, to make sure she’s not pushing—because she wants this so much that it feels like it might consume both of them—but Delphine’s teeth are scraping at her pulse point and she gasps into the air, desperation making weapons of her fingertips, nails pressing indentations into Delphine’s back.

Cosima presses into Delphine, grinding against her with the slow motion of her hips, and Delphine presses out from the wall to meet her, warm and wanting _._ Cosima’s hands are on Delphine’s waist, pulling her nearer, desperate for closeness, and her exhalations are met with equal urgency, with Delphine’s warm breath by her ear, hot condensation on her neck. Cosima presses harder, and Delphine’s back hits the wall again with a satisfying kind of _thunk_ sound—and her voice turns back to a gasp, a soft shocked sound.“Want—to take you—” says Cosima, unable to finish the thought through the lips hot on her neck, but Delphine makes a soft breathy sound in her ear that sounds like _yes._

Cosima takes Delphine’s hand, both their palms sweaty, and leads her upstairs to her bedroom. She can feel her own pulse all through her, thundering in her ears and throbbing in her fingers where they’re tight around Delphine’s.

When they reach the bedroom they stand for a moment, swaying, hands still clasped together, and then Delphine’s mouth crashes into hers. It’s ungainly, the way Delphine walks her back towards the bed, and Cosima stumbles over her feet, knocking her teeth into Delphine’s—the other girl makes a pained noise.

“You okay?”

“Mm.” Delphine kisses her again in answer, murmuring something that might be “you are _clumsy,”_ but it’s muffled by Cosima’s lips.

Cosima’s against the bed, now.She can feel Delphine growing less certain, but her mouth is all over and that’s good enough. She’s all lips and tongue and teeth, and Cosima’s hands are tugging Delphine’s hips against hers still, mouth seeking greedily. “Mm,” she murmurs, “this is…good,” those ineloquent words all she can manage, and then Delphine’s lips move to her neck and she’s lost all grasp of language to the mouth fluttering delicate kisses down her neck to her collarbone.

Delphine stops finally, helpless. Her hands are on Cosima’s sides, sliding up and down the skin beneath her shirt, but she’s pulled back, uncertain. Cosima grins against her lips and slides out from her position against the bed, turning and moving relentlessly in until Delphine, pressed hard against the side of the bed, scrambles up onto the mattress—leaning back with her head against the pillows—and Cosima climbs up after her. Her hands are on Delphine’s waist, hips, legs and she’s making a chain of bite marks down Delphine’s neck. She should stop, should stop marking—it’s rude, inconsiderate, covering them up’s going to be a bitch—but every time she bites down on Delphine’s skin there’s a soft whimpering noise and Delphine’s legs tighten around Cosima’s waist, and she’s not sure if she can sacrifice that sound, that feeling. She sucks at the skin and Delphine moans low in her throat, burying her face in Cosima’s hair.Cosima slides Delphine’s shirt up, testing, and Delphine lifts her arms obligingly, a smile curling at her lips.

It’s dizzying, practically, Delphine laid out all lacy bra and soft belly with the top of her jeans riding against her hipbones, and Cosima moves in against her, her shirt against Delphine’s skin, her tongue tangling with Delphine’s with a languid kind of force. Delphine’s fingers play at her hips, touching gently on the edges of her shirt. They pull off her shirt together, two sets of hands scrabbling clumsily—it catches on the glasses, which Cosima places on the side table—and then her skin is pressed against Delphine’s.Dark-manicured fingernails are clutching at Cosima’s back and Delphine’s thigh is wedged between Cosima’s legs and whether she’s doing it on purpose or not is irrelevant because _god,_ it’s good. Cosima’s hand tangles in Delphine’s hair. Cosima kisses her breath away until she’s left gasping, still arching up into Cosima. They surge together and Cosima is back to Delphine’s neck, slower this time, softer, drawing long soft whimpering breaths from Delphine’s lips. “Cosima…” she murmurs, but her voice is lost; Cosima can’t work out how to respond, and as she’s figuring out how to form words again Delphine captures her mouth, pulling her lip between her teeth, and Cosima decides maybe words aren’t the priority at exactly this moment. Delphine’s hands are tracing her back, diplomatically ghosting over her bra straps, but Cosima’s impatient and she reaches behind Delphine, locking eyes with her as she fumbles with the clasp and the bra comes off. Delphine’s fingers grapple awkwardly at Cosima’s but she gets it eventually, hands losing their clumsiness easily as Cosima’s bra falls away, and she pulls the two of them tight together, all skin on skin, softness complementing softness. Cosima palms a breast, pressing and teasing until Delphine exhales a moan into her mouth, hips lifting, grinding hot and needy against Cosima’s thigh.

She fumbles with the button of Delphine’s jeans for too long, apparently, because Delphine reaches down to do it herself. She slides the pants over her legs and Cosima takes the opportunity to take off her skirt and deal with her tights. She’s still struggling with them when Delphine kisses her like burning on the mouth, laughing as the tights get caught on her heel.

“Are you _sure_ you know what you’re doing?” Delphine asks, eyes bright with suppressed laughter. Cosima raises her eyebrows, pulling off the tights in one motion and balling them up to be thrown into the corner of the room.

“You bet your ass I do,” she says, and as if to prove her point, she presses Delphine against the pillows again, sudden, and sucks a deep red mark into the delicate skin of her neck. Nips lightly at her earlobe. Delphine lets out a shuddering breath and Cosima’s smile quirks against her skin. “Told you,” she says, and if Delphine was poised to say something clever back she loses the ability when Cosima’s fingers trace a sensitive spot by her hip. Cosima mouths at the hollow of the other girl’s neck, traces a path down her sternum. She teases carefully until Delphine grips her hair and says, “Cosima, _please_ ,” and then she moves in earnest and the soft mewling sounds coming from somewhere above her head are kinda the hottest thing she’s ever heard—kinda make her want to keep doing this forever. But she stops for a moment, lays her hands one over the other on the flat of Delphine’s chest and rests her chin on them, looking up at Delphine’s face. “You good?”

“Yes,” says Delphine, clear if a little breathless.

“You want me to keep going?”

“Yes,” she says again, but there’s a need in her voice that wasn’t there before. _“S’il te plait_ — _”_ Her sentence is cut off by Cosima’s reaching hands, by the path she’s tracing down Delphine’s body with her mouth, nipping at her belly. Her hands play at Delphine’s legs, tracing along her thighs, edging closer to where they meet with every pass. She presses kisses along the line of Delphine’s underwear, upper lip against skin, lower lip nudging cotton, tonguing the line between them. Her fingers nudge at the fabric, tracing its edges, and she looks up at Delphine, waiting.

“Cosima,” she finally murmurs, and there’s a desperation edging her voice that Cosima loves maybe more than she should.

“What,” Cosima says lazily, and she’s smiling up at Delphine with her eyes glittering, predatory in the most affectionate way.

“Cosima”—more urgently— _“please.”_ Cosima, flashing a sharp-toothed grin, slides the underwear down her legs. When Cosima tosses aside the underwear, she presses a kiss to Delphine’s anklebone, hands sliding up her calves. She kisses up her legs, each touch of her lips is deliberate, almost reverential.

Delphine shifts beneath her, hips rolling up to meet nothing but air, and Cosima laughs into the skin of Delphine’s thigh.  “I’ll get there,” she says, marking her purple-red with her teeth—Delphine **shifts** more, making a soft breathy sound.

 _“Cosima,”_ she says again, and one of her hands tangles in Cosima’s hair, drawing her up, insistent.

“Can’t a girl take her time? Artist at work, yeah?”

“You are very—ah—cocky, yes? But so far…I see nothing.”

“Oh yeah?” Cosima’s eyebrows dart up, faux-dangerous. “Be”—she nips at Delphine’s skin, obstinately drawing back down—“patient.” She kisses slowly up her inner thigh, hands splayed across her hips, holding Delphine against the bed as she strains for contact. When she finally reaches the juncture of her legs there is a mess of bite marks in her wake and Delphine's moan is exquisite. “I want to save that sound forever,” Cosima murmurs, pulling back for a split second to speak, and Delphine makes the most disappointed sound she’s ever heard.

“Cosima,” she says, all exasperated amusement, “must you speak _now?”_ and Cosima settles back between her legs, grinning, the pads of her fingers making soft indentations in Delphine’s thighs.

She watches Delphine, tracking her, catlike: watches the way her eyes squeeze shut, the way her hands grip the bedspread so hard her knuckles go white. Cosima takes the kind of time you take when you have all weekend in an empty house and a big soft bed, and she can tell Delphine kind of hates her for it, hates her in a beautiful way that makes her breathless, leaves her with nothing to do but whimper her displeasure—pleasure—impatience—and match Cosima’s pace with the slow roll of her hips. Cosima looks up at Delphine—the long pale line of her body, her neck all mottled with bruising, arching to her thrown-back head—and her pulse thuds hot between her legs. She teases, tongue dancing feather-light against Delphine, and it’s kind of incredible. Kind of amazing. The way the other girl arches into her mouth, full of wanting; the way her thighs clench around Cosima’s head, heels digging into her back; the way she whispers rapid breathless French into the air. (The way Cosima can discern, sometimes, her name among the stuttered foreign syllables.) Delphine’s legs start to tremble violently and she’s straining up, up, and Cosima draws her out to the last, lets her shake against her, around her, until Delphine clutches at her hair, gasping, “ _Trop—trop—_ too much.”

Cosima crawls up the bed again and rests on her side, letting her head fall against the pillow, one arm resting across the stomach of the pink-flushed, heavy-breathing girl beside her. Delphine’s chest is sweat-soaked now, the patchy redness fading slowly from her skin as her breathing slows. She turns and buries her face in Cosima’s shoulder.

Cosima nudges the top of her head with her nose. “You doing okay?”

Delphine hums a contented sound into Cosima’s skin before looking up. Her hair is a mess and her eyes are shining, and she murmurs, “I am…feeling happy, right now.”

“Good,” says Cosima softly. “Me too.”

Delphine starts giggling, the sounds sending vibrations through Cosima’s chest. “So,” she says, “would I say I, ah, got laid?”

Cosima laughs at the sound of the words stumbling awkwardly from Delphine’s lips. “Yeah,” she says, “yeah, that’s how the saying goes. And I, uh, got you laid, I guess.”

“That sounds like you were my…what is the word? My wingman. Not involved.” She looks at Cosima. “Do you want me to—?”

“No, no, totally don’t worry about it. Your first time with a girl, yeah? We can, you know, ease you into things.”

Delphine presses a kiss to the flat of Cosima’s chest. “What if I do not want to _ease?”_ she asks, and Cosima flushes hot all over.

She bites her lip, eyes meeting Cosima’s, questioning. Cosima grins. “Well, I’m open to suggestions.” Delphine flushes, but she rolls them over until she’s above Cosima, hair falling around her face. Anxiety knits in her brow as she hovers there, resting on her forearms, open-mouthed. “Shhh,” Cosima soothes, “shhh,” and she nestles her hand securely on the back of Delphine’s neck, pulling her in to meet her lips. “Only if you want to,” she says softly, into the corner of the other girl’s mouth.

The kiss seems to give Delphine courage; she deepens it, tongue sliding into Cosima’s mouth, teeth scraping against Cosima’s lower lip before she pulls back. She hovers again for a moment, unsure, and then swipes her lips clumsily across Cosima’s cheek before kissing in earnest at her neck. Her mouth is warm and enthusiastic, her teeth bumping gracelessly against Cosima’s skin. She makes her way down Cosima’s body, tentative, freezing for several agonizing seconds before mustering the courage to touch her breasts, to put her mouth on them. Cosima murmurs encouragement but she thinks the sharp inhalation that invades her sentence when Delphine tweaks a nipple with her fingertips is probably better than any words she could offer. Delphine’s approval-hungry eyes flick up at the sound, and Cosima groans low in the back of her throat, reaching down to grasp at the cascading curls. Delphine presses on, sliding further down, sitting back on her knees—looking up with every inch for approval. When she reaches the point where the smooth skin of Cosima’s stomach turns to dark curls, she pulls back, eyes wide, fingers tracing nervously at Cosima’s thigh.

“You sure?” Cosima asks, voice gentle as she can make it against the arousal and anticipation tight in her throat.

“I am…” Her teeth dig into her lower lip. “Yes. I am sure.” She drags her lips along Cosima’s thigh and settles between her legs, and then her tongue darts out experimentally. Cosima’s hips buck with the shock of it, the startling jolt of sensation. Delphine makes an alarmed noise at the sudden movement, but it turns into laughter, unexpected giggles muffled in the delicate skin where Cosima’s thigh meets her pelvis. “I’m sorry,” she’s saying, breathless, returning to task before her laughter has fully subsided, her delirious involuntary bursts of breath and sound making Cosima shift against her, burying her hands in her hair again.

Delphine is tentative, carefully probing. She's too slow and too gentle, just enough for Cosima to strain into her mouth, to tighten her grasp in her hair, for her other hand to imprint crescents of pink skin into her own thigh. She gasps, and moans, and curls her toes into the sheets, and when Delphine draws back without having brought her to any conclusion, saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t—” Cosima shakes her head, smiling. “Come here,” she says softly, helping Delphine extricate herself from between her legs, drawing her up to lie beside her again. Cosima kisses Delphine’s lips, murmuring, “It’s okay.”

“It is embarrassing,” says Delphine, her face flushed red, one of her hands making frantic and quickly aborted movements in the air.

“Seriously,” says Cosima, “it’s not like sex is supposed to be, like, this crazy rush toward an orgasm, you know?” She kisses Delphine’s lips again, feeling the other girl relax into it just a little more this time. “You’re good. You did good. Okay?”

Delphine closes her eyes into her own gentle, self-effacing laughter. “Okay,” she says when she’s opened them again. “I will believe you. So long as you will let me try again, on another occasion.”

“Counting on it,” Cosima says, the last word swallowed by another soft press of Delphine’s lips on hers. They curl into each other, pressed close on the big bed, and Delphine nestles her head into the crook of Cosima’s neck.

“You good?” she asks, one last time, with her fingers idly tracing the length of Delphine’s body.

“Better than good,” says Delphine, and Cosima can feel her smiling against her neck.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having emotions about posting the last chapter. Thank you all so much for reading. I'm so proud and happy about what has happened with this fic, and I'm so grateful for all the feedback I've gotten. <3

In the morning Cosima murmurs into Delphine’s skin, something like, “Want to go dress shopping?”

Delphine, still half-asleep, makes a questioning sound.

Cosima sits up in bed, grinning. “For the dance. Dress shopping. Or, like, shirt and tie shopping, depending on how queer you’re feeling.”

Delphine chuckles, a sound from low in her chest. “No,” she says firmly.

“No? Did you, uh, not want to go anymore?”

“I want to be surprised,” she says. “And I want _you_ to be surprised.”

Cosima rolls her eyes back in her head. “You’re kind of a high-maintenance girlfriend. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“I have been told I am worth it,” says Delphine, smiling, and Cosima groans and leans over to kiss her.

So Cosima drags an unimpressed Quinn to a grimy thrift store, while Delphine meets up with an Italian exchange student she met in her history class. Cosima tries on a dozen dresses, pulling her hair this way and that, smoothing fabric over her hips. When she finally decides on a tight scoop-necked burgundy dress (begrudgingly approved with “it makes your tits look good, anyway”), Quinn is visibly relieved. “Thank _God,”_ she groans. “Can we get out of here? This place smells like my grandma.”

Hair and makeup preparations happen with Quinn, too; Cosima puts her nervous energy toward fixing her eyeliner five or six times, trying out eight different colors of lip gloss, adjusting Quinn’s bow tie. Smoke clouds her image in the mirror as she lights up in the bathroom, holding the joint between her teeth while she rims her eyes in black.

She’s ready a full half hour before she’s meant to pick up Delphine and tries to distract herself by pestering Quinn about her secret date. “At least tell me who she is,” Cosima says, making a grab for Quinn’s phone.

Quinn snatches it back, blushing bright red. “Her name’s Sam, you _don’t_ know her, now will you leave me alone?”

“Oh my god, the skateboard chick?” The girl is a vivid image in her mind: Sam who jumped her board down the biggest flight of stairs in school in seventh grade, Sam with backward baseball caps and permanent band-aids on her knees and a tube of pink lip gloss in her pocket.

Quinn’s face turns, if possible, even redder. “Yeah, she, uh—skates sometimes, I guess.”

“Wow, wow. I had the _biggest_ crush on her in, like, middle school. I didn’t even know she was queer, dude. Are you guys, like, a thing?”

Quinn shrugs, hands hiding a grin.

Once Quinn has clammed up, Cosima is back to drumming her fingers nervously against her thigh, tapping the screen of her phone to light up every few seconds and display the time. It’s stupid, she thinks: stupid to be nervous. Like, one of the stupidest things. She’s been dating Delphine for _weeks_ now, has seen her in (and out of) any number of outfits, and there’s absolutely no reason this night should be any different. But here she is anyway. A bad case of nerves before the big dance. _Huge_ cliché.

Finally, at seven, they head out the door. Quinn offers directions to Sam’s place, where Sam, who Cosima’s never seen without a hat jammed down over her long blonde hair, is wearing a tight black dress and flats, waving shyly as they drive up. They sit pressed close in the back, Quinn wedged into the middle seat. Cosima adjusts the rearview before she drives off, catching a glimpse of their hands clasped together.

Her heart is pounding more than it should be as she pulls up to Delphine’s house. Delphine’s not outside, doesn’t come out when the car pulls up. Cosima eyes her phone, considering texting for only a moment before hopping out of the car and walking up to the door. She adjusts her black tights and runs her fingers through her hair, squinting at her reflection in the outside window, and then rings the doorbell.

Delphine’s voice comes from behind the door, muffled, giggling: _“Arrete!_ You must have enough by now!” The door opens to reveal her laughing, breathless and pink-cheeked. “Come in! They want a photo of us together.” Delphine practically trips over her feet dragging Cosima inside, tottering in her heels. And then Cosima has her arm around Delphine before she can even take in the sight of her, wavering next to Delphine’s unsteady footing, posing with her hand on Delphine’s waist, with Delphine’s lips on her cheek. When they finally escape, the door slamming shut behind them, Cosima grabs Delphine’s hand as she’s starting down the steps from the porch. “Hey, hey, hey, slow down. I haven’t even seen you yet.”

Cosima takes a step back. Delphine’s dress is a soft gray knee-length thing, the fabric of the skirt hugging close to her legs—the longest legs Cosima has ever seen, somehow even longer tonight. She’s still a little wobbly on her heels; her knees knock together as she struggles to stabilize. Her hair is falling around her face in soft curls, halo-like, lit by the porch light from behind, and Cosima suddenly, absurdly, wants to skip out on the dance and just press against Delphine, bury her face in that hair.

“Cosima? Are you all right?”

Cosima grins. “Sorry, sorry, just trying to decide if you’re real or, like, a super-vivid daydream.”

“Have you come to a conclusion?” Delphine asks, amusement tugging at her lips.

“I think I need to gather more evidence,” says Cosima, and it’s the kind of awful line that only works when you’re talking to someone like Delphine—someone who totally likes you, and obviously it helps if they’re your genius lab partner of a girlfriend—and she reaches out and tugs Delphine in by the waist, kisses her in a languid sort of way, tasting lipstick and the mint of her toothpaste.

“Hey assholes!” comes Quinn’s voice from the car. “We’re gonna be late to sound check if you don’t stop sucking face!”

Cosima lifts her right hand behind her, middle finger extended, and traps Delphine’s lip between her teeth.

They are, in fact, late to sound check. Cosima says something like “drummers, you know,” and Quinn punches her in the arm. But they get going with minimal grumbling from the sound guys with impressive facial hair and they sound _good,_ really good, and Sam and Delphine are talking shyly in the corner of the empty dance floor, and even if Amanda’s making irritated comments about the acoustics, everything is…kind of perfect, actually.

They open the doors at eight, and people start streaming in, puffing into the breathalyzer held by a grumpy English teacher before being allowed access to the dance floor. As soon as there are a few people inside, Quinn starts. The drumbeat thuds against Cosima’s ribs and the lights are making her dizzy, but she finds her voice somewhere in her chest and something about the night and the music and the lingering aftereffects of the joint lends her a giddiness on the fringes of her mind, something soaring in her.

Cosima loses Delphine in the crowd for a while, but she finds her again, blonde head bobbing up and down—dancing, weaving in and out of people. She flickers in and out of Cosima’s vision, disappearing into the mass of bodies before coming back into view. But she always shows up again. And Cosima sings to her. It’s almost subconscious at first, the way the words just start to mean _Delphine,_ how they hit her unexpectedly, make her think of blonde curls and soft lips and knobby knees. But by the time they get to the last song, Cosima’s heart is full to bursting. Delphine’s wedged her way into the crowd surrounding the band, so she’s close enough to touch, practically, pink-cheeked and sweaty. _Then I saw her face,_ the song goes, and the words make her heart pound. _Now I’m a believer._ And this is the moment, Cosima thinks, that she’s gone for good. Sunk. Head over heels in fuckin’ _love_ with this girl she’s known three weeks. Maybe it’s not Romeo-and-Juliet, poison-yourself-over-her-lifeless-body kind of love—maybe not even ’til-death-do-us-part kind of love, but her heart’s fluttering and she has a girl in a pretty dress beaming at her like she’s _everything._ And for now that’s totally enough.

Cosima’s totally, completely out of breath by the time she’s finished helping pack up. The mood of the dance has changed with the addition of the DJ and some neon lighting, and Delphine is breathless too, when Cosima finds her. They move together, magnetic, the sweat on their bodies mingling as Cosima’s body presses into Delphine’s, thighs sliding slick against each other when they meet. “You were wonderful!” It’s said in a shout, necessary to be heard over the music. _“Magnifique!”_ Cosima laughs, pulls her close, doesn’t bother to try and speak, but she’s thinking _magnifique,_ dizzily, over and over again.

A slow song comes on, and Cosima revels in the opportunity to catch her breath, to snake her arms around Delphine’s waist and press her face into Delphine’s neck, pressing gentle kisses to her skin and tasting salt. They sway together, Cosima humming the song into the juncture of Delphine’s shoulder and neck, Delphine kissing the top of her head and trailing her fingers through the fine hairs at the base of her skull—making her shiver even in the heat of hundreds of sweaty bodies jammed together. When Cosima opens her eyes for a moment, she picks out Quinn and Sam close by, Sam with her hands on Quinn’s waist, Quinn bright red and looking up at Sam with wide, wide eyes.

Cosima feels like she might melt into Delphine, with the heat and exhaustion making dead weight of her limbs. They could fuse together, there on the dance floor, with the air full of perfume and sweat and the undeniable smell of weed coming from somewhere the chaperones have been unable to pinpoint. They could melt into each other and Cosima doesn’t even think she would mind.

When the music speeds up again, Cosima grabs Delphine’s hand and gestures toward the exit. They push through the dance floor, nearly losing their grip on each other’s hands while trying to squeeze between two shouting rings of people, and finally make it to the door.

They’re greeted by a rush of cool air and the twilight-tinted courtyard. Couples are curled up together on benches, silhouetted against the indigo sky.

“Do you, ah, want to sit?” asks Delphine. Her hand is still holding tight to Cosima’s, sweat making their fingers slide against each other.

They perch together on the edge of the fountain, knees knocking, and Delphine’s lips paint their gloss onto Cosima’s mouth. Their hands are clasped, resting between them. The breeze whispers through the air, redirecting the spray from the fountain, and Cosima laughs as it hits her face.

“Cosima?” says Delphine, before Cosima’s laughter has died. Her thumb is sweeping across Cosima’s palm, back and forth.

“Yeah?”

_“Je veux—_ I’m sorry, I am nervous—I want. I want to tell you something.”

“Yeah, okay. Shoot.”

She bites her lip before murmuring, _“Je t’aime.”_ Her eyes widen. “I’m sorry, do you—”

“I understand,” says Cosima quickly, grinning. “Totally got you there. And, uh, I love you too, you know. Just, like, in case you were wondering.”

“Oh yes?” Delphine smile is huge and Cosima can feel hers matching it, an involuntary grin spreading across her face.

“Yeah,” she says, and leans in to kiss Delphine’s nose. “I love you.” Lips. “I love you.” The corner of her mouth. “I love you.” And then she can’t say it anymore because Delphine starts kissing back. They hardly notice when twilight turns to night, when it gets so dark they can hardly see each other’s faces; they sit tangled in each other, fingers and lips interlocked.

“I think,” says Delphine after a while, “the dance is finishing. Are you ready to go?”

“With you?”

“Mm.”

“Anywhere.”


End file.
